Oh a fresh new year! I love fresh starts and artificial measures of time. I'm starting a Whole30 challenge tomorrow but it will be for more like 45 days. We are planning a Vegas trip in mid-Feb and I want to follow the plan until then. It will go from January 4-February 17. Aside from the standards like no grains, sugars or veggie oils I will also have NO alcohol or caffeinated coffee. These are both big ones for me. I drink coffee all day long, every day. Today was my second day without, though, and I'm doing fine. My first day was Monday and I didn't have to work so I took a nap. That helped. I assume by the end of the week I'll be fine without it.

The alcohol will be tough. I have my office Christmas party on Saturday and drinking is like, the main activity. I'm always happy to join in! But I like the idea of staying sober rather than allowing myself even one cheat. I like that food temptations should be at a minimum from here on out- holiday treats will be gone from work and home. I'm going to continue to go to crossfit 3x/week, sprint once, and go on 5 walks/week.

For some reason the message on the Whole 9 website finally resonates with me: beating cancer is hard; not eating ranch dressing should not be hard. Therefore, I shouldn't even have to post to motivate myself! But I will anyway

Yesterday:
B: 2 hb eggs
L: steak salad w/ salsa and avocado
D: a lot like lunch, a taco style salad. I'm avoiding dairy for the next month so I skipped the sour cream and cheese. I didn't even notice, though it was hard to not put it on.
S: some nuts and dark chocolate when I was reading and feeling snacky.

Went for a 30-40 min walk (didn't time it) in my VFF's thinking that it was so warm out. My toes froze! I guess wearing them in January was just wishful thinking. Also, my Crossfit gym started a Paleo challenge and had an intro presentation we had to listen to in order to be part of the challenge. It was seriously awesome to hear other people in my somewhat rural part of the world talk about MDA! I'm so pumped for everyone to continue to learn about this WOE.

Today:
B: herbal tea
L: chunk of smoked salmon from my friend who caught the salmon in Alaska. A generous spoonful of almond butter. And then a teeny bit more.
D: I'm making HUGE bison burgers tonight and oven baked sweet potato fries. I'm actually hungry right now but have no more food at work except the almond butter and am excited to eat a 1/2 lb-er or something.

Did crossfit at lunch. It was 8 sets of 3 powercleans, followed by a 1000 m. row (as fast as possible). Short and very sweet workout. I love discovering chalk in my fingernails while reviewing some pleadings with a client later in the day.

I'm having a little dilemma: I love my cf gym and I love the guys who coach there. Crossfit has a huge variety, is fun, and always tough. I have a sense of loyalty as I've been there since not long after it opened and I enjoy watching the gym take off. But my friend mentioned her garage-style, weightlifting gym that is run by a guy who trains a lot of his clients to compete in lifting competitions and figure comps. He seems extremely good at getting women to lift amazingly heavy. Which I think is where my heart truly lies. My commitment to the CF gym is up this spring and I'm considering switching. But I don't really know what to do. I'd feel like such a traitor!

It's been a while since I hung out around here! I'm jumping back in because of some processed food creep that I've been experiencing lately. Tracking here has helped in the past. My weight is a bit on the bloaty side to go along with it. I've felt best around 140 lbs and today I weighed 152 (!) I'm 5'6" with an athletic build. This has happened over the past 6 months. I'm guessing that in about three days I'll be back in the 148 range but still. It was a little bit of a shocker. What has worked for me in the past was to do a two week primal re-set in the low carb range and with NO cheats. This is usually enough to kick my bad habits and be a bit more reasonable. I'll check in with daily food tracking and exercise.

Yikes, I was so tired yesterday. I ended up going to bed at 9:00 and sleeping until almost 6:30! I followed yesterday's plan with a few changes: I had roasted cauliflower instead of collards and I had some macadamia nuts in the evening. Our crossfit workout was particularly long and taxing so I went to bed early instead of going for a night time walk.

Exercise: (planned)
Crossfit
Glute work at home (following the strong curves glute plan as an experiment for the next three months)

I realized that I should weigh myself during this time so I can see how different things affect my weight. I'm not that huge on weighing a certain amount but I also know my body well enough lately to find my weight to be a fairly valuable measure over the long term. Like, I know that 140-ish (138-142) is a good morning weight for me if my diet is good. And like I said above, I'm guessing my weight after 3-5 days of low carb eating will be around 148, so I have about 8 lbs of fat to work off. Ugh, that sounds like a lot but it is a doable amount. I always wish I would have figured out that I was ahem, growing, at about 4 lbs up